House of Wonder by Sarah Healy Read Free Book Online Page A

time he came?”
    â€œAbout three hundred,” I answered, making my voice light.
    â€œThat’s ’cause Tokyo is really far away,” she explained, repeating the logic I’d offered her so many times before.
You don’t get to see your daddy as much because Tokyo is really, really far away.
    Over dinner, Maggie had asked me what I was going to do while Rose was in the city, suggesting drinks and maybe dinner. Maggie loved drinks-and-maybe-dinner. And when I’d opted out, she’d given me the sort of look that seemed to insist there were better ways to spend a child-free Saturday evening than watching a movie in your fat pants. She had, however, let the subject drop.
    The next morning, after Miriam and John picked up Rose, after I did the laundry and paid the bills and scrubbed the bathroom floor, I sat on the couch and looked around.
    With my sock-clad toes, I gently poked Gordo in the side. “What now, huh?” I asked. He groaned and rolled onto his back, straightening his legs and arching his back. Objectively, Gordo was an exceptionally unattractive dog—something close to a chocolate Lab mixed with a sea lion. But he was a noble beast, loyal and true, who licked my feet and warmed the cold side of my bed, and whose small, slightly crossed yellow eyes looked at me with pure affection. I thought Gordo was magnificent. “Should we stick around here?”
    The entirety of our little cottage could be seen from the family room. And compared with my mother’s house, mine looked like the dormitory of a monk. Or would, if not for the small pops of color and life, all of which were related to Rose. Her toys, her artwork, her clothes. I never did like being there when she wasn’t home. I never did like the way I could feel her absence as I passed through each room, seeing her shoes by the door or her chair in the kitchen. It was like walking through a cold spot in the ocean. So on impulse, I picked up the phone. On impulse, I called the one woman who would understand completely.
    â€œHey, Jenna,” said my mother, sounding surprised to hear from me.
    I hesitated for a moment. “Hi, Mom,” I said.
    â€œWhat’s going on, sweetheart?” There was a twinge of worry in her voice, as if she was expecting trouble. And I realized how rare it was for me to call for a chat.
    â€œI was wondering what you’re doing tonight.”
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    A few hours later, I was in my mother’s house, sitting on her couch, and watching a movie in my fat pants. Spread over my lap was a blanket and my slippered feet were resting on the edge of the coffee table. But despite those comforts, I had trouble relaxing. The house on Royal Court—with its memories, its things—felt like quicksand.
    Objects had accumulated over the years, settled into their places like layers of sedimentary rock, but underneath it all, the bones remained the same. The same bulky television sat in the same oak entertainment center, the shelves of which were filled with the same boxes of jumbled VHS tapes. The right side of the same plaid couch had the same squeaky spring. And the same mauve lampshade gave the room the same dim light. I wondered if I was the same girl I had been when I watched my father walk out the front door with a suitcase in each hand, as if he were taking the last lifeboat off a sinking ship.
    â€œOh, Lord,” said my mother, bringing a hand to her forehead with a pained chuckle. We were watching the beauty contest scene in the movie
Shag
, in which Bridget Fonda’s character performs a scene from
Gone with the Wind
for a less than enthusiastic crowd. “That poor thing.”
    I shoved one of the sofa’s many teddy bears behind my back as a pillow. “Did you ever do a dramatic interpretation for your talent?” I was clearly joking, but my mother answered honestly.
    â€œNo,” she said, her head tilted as she